Unwound - Mkultra (Kill Rock Stars)

It’s a little known fact that, for all his “wake up America, you’re dead!” proclamations, Anthony H. Wilson looked at a certain faction of the ‘90s American indie-rock scene with a great deal of paternal affection. How could he not? Just look at Sub Pop’s aping of Wilson’s hype machine, or the whole Unrest/Teen Beat scene and their Factory-worshiping record sleeves. It was a dark day in Virginia when Unrest had to sate their rampant Anglophilia by cutting a deal with 4AD. Truth is, when the ‘80s became the ‘90s, Wilson doggedly clung to his dreams of running a label that held a mirror up to the unwashed faces of E-addled British youth, meaning he had to hurriedly cram his box of rare Simple Machines seven-inches underneath Factory’s overpriced boardroom table whenever Keith Allen or Alan Erasmus were around. Wilson's label officially went bankrupt towards the end of 1992, just before Unwound released their first album, Fake Train, making them the great Factory band that never was. Unwound's career-long tenure on the indier-than-thou Kill Rock Stars might make them unlikely Factory fodder, but they tick a surprisingly high number of Wilson-esque boxes. New Plastic Ideas just sounds like a Factory album title, and the songs would have looked wonderful peering out from a typically enigmatic Peter Saville sleeve. Also, their influences were far artier than many of their contemporaries on KRS. "Mkultra" manages to stir in a little Devo or Polvo-esque robo-rock; the 1997 KRS twelve-inch "The Light at the End of a Tunnel is a Train" is a fleeting dalliance with dance music; the heathen-like sounds of a synthesizer can be heard on 1996's Repetition; and Tony Wilson would have put some wonderful spin behind singer Justin Trosper's arcane lyrics. But that's not all. Just check out the constructivist sleeve design on 1995's The Future of What, or Trosper's krautrock-meets-musique-concrete side project, Replikants. In an ideal world Unwound would have taken all these elements and fed them into Wilson's hype machine, becoming (along with ESG) Factory's great American signings. As it is, we have a smattering of great records and some dreams of what could have been, and for any newcomers, "Mkultra" is as good a place to start as any.

Green-Wood Cemetery

Full set here.

Gallon Drunk - The Last Gasp (Safty) (Clawfist)

Maracas are an underrated part of any band's arsenal. When Gallon Drunk were touting their wares around some unforgiving London venues in the early '90s, they employed a guy, Joe Byfield, to simply stand on stage and play maracas. Incredible as it may seem, Byfield's bean-shakers were key to the band's sound--just listen to the way they kick in 30 seconds into 1991 single "Draggin' Along," lifting the song out of the mire of Birthday Party pastiches and into something altogether more exotic. The band certainly had the specter of Mr. Cave looming over them during these early stages in their career (singer/guitarist James Johnston eventually threw in the towel and started playing with the Bad Seeds in '93), but their range was always a little broader than they were given credit for; Suicide and Martin Denny both spring to mind on this single, which was also released in '91. "The Last Gasp (Safty)" is marked by some wildly overdriven guitar/organ playing from Johnston, who would frequently play both instruments, sing, and take swift gulps from a pint glass, often all at once, during the band's chaotic live shows. They never quite captured the raw power of those shows on vinyl, but "Last Gasp" comes close, with Johnston's indecipherable whoops vying for air amid tribal drums, a slow-crawling bassline and, ultimately, the sound of all his instruments collapsing around him. One thing Gallon Drunk did have was stage presence, and in Johnston and bass player Michael Delanian, two men who looked like they rarely saw daylight. With their greasy quiffs and stale second-hand suits, they bore the look of men who trawled the streets of Soho looking for a squalid strip joint or an after hours bar. "The Last Gasp (Safty)" plays like the perfect soundtrack to their dusky excursions.

Liars - Warsaw, Brooklyn, February 9, 2008

Our parents got it wrong about metal. There was never any real threat from boys who used hair straighteners and ran overpriced merch tables at their shows. I went to a Slayer concert when I was a teenager. There was a faint whiff of unpleasantness in the air, but nothing really bad was going to happen to you at a Slayer show. It was too controlled, too orderly. I wanted to be in the presence of bands who looked like they might actually cause some physical discomfort if you got too close to them. Slayer, with their upside-down crucifixes and songs about Satan, never really got that concept. Or, if they did get it, were just really bad at executing it. Liars, on the other hand, are a band who look like they'd indoctrinate you into their cult, flay the skin off your body, and have a good laugh about it as they chowed down on your entrails. And instead of Satan, Liars sing about witches. At last night's show in Brooklyn's Polish National Home, singer Angus Andrew brought his peculiar brand of grotesque vaudevillia to the stage once again. Andrew was hampered by a back injury that he picked up earlier in the tour, forcing him to sit in a chair for some of the performance. But it didn't stop him periodically leaping up and lunging toward the crowd, performing some misshapen dance moves and spilling his ugly words right into the faces of exuberant fans. The problem facing Andrew and his band is the uphill battle against the monolith that is Drum's Not Dead. In the hands of lesser talents, songs such as "Freak Out" and "Pure Unevil" would respectively sound like pleasing takes on Nuggets-style psychedelia and Psychocandy-ish pop. But these songs from 2007's Liars album suffocate when you stack them up next to the bewitching "Let's Not Wrestle Mt. Heart Attack" and "A Visit From Drum." The latter is a stunning tour de force in its live incarnation, with Aaron Hemphill and Julian Gross pounding away at their respective drum kits, offering a considered take on the ferocious double-drumming of early Adam & the Ants. Hemphill is an underrated cog in the Liars' machine; much of the press attention on the band focuses on Andrew's antics, but Hemphill's contributions are considerable. The huge drone (somewhat reminiscent of Pylon's "Driving School") that blisters to the surface via Hemphill's fingers on "Let's Not Wrestle Mt. Heart Attack" is an immense, all-consuming presence in the middle of Liars' set. Meanwhile, Andrew inhabited a somewhat restrained version of his usual Gibby-Haynes-meets-Nick-Cave persona, only momentarily threatening mischief as he half-heartedly grabbed a large Polish flag from the side of the stage. But while their singer may have been performing at half-speed, the band still summoned up enough energy to serve Brooklyn a deliciously acidic sip of their grubby beauty.

Fiery Furnaces - BBC Collective

An interview I did with the Fiery Furnaces for the BBC.

Stretchheads - Eyeball Origami Aftermath Wit Vegetarian Leg (Blast First)

According to Wikipedia, the nightlife in the Scottish commuter town of Erskine, which lies in close proximity to Glasgow International Airport, simply consists of a Chinese restaurant and a few local pubs. The Stretchheads formed in Erskine in the late 1980s, giving birth to a sound that paired the gibbering soliloquies of singer P6 with a furiously agitated musical backing. Presumably the terminal boredom of life in Erskine played a big part in bringing the berserker punk of the Stretchheads into the world, and while this was always a band that wasn't meant to last, they left a suitably muddy footprint behind them. "Eyeball Origami Aftermath Wit Vegetarian Leg," their first release for Blast First, is a seven-inch single unleashed by four band members who play as though they're in a competition to see who can finish each song first. "Incontinent of Sex" finds P6 strapping on a male falsetto and bellowing "big man! little man!" over blubbery slabs of thick, distorted bass; "Afghanistan Bananastan" is the sound of someone electrifying their fingers in a plug socket then attempting to run as their feet sink into a sticky morass of globby glue. And on it goes, with two more tracks, plenty of unhinged interludes between songs, and a heightened sense of flustered delirium that variously recalls Captain Beefheart, long-forgotten noisemakers the Sperm Wails, Peel favorites Bogshed, the deranged Texas cow-punk of the Butthole Surfers, and Scotland's own Dog Faced Hermans. In 2007, 20 years after the Stretchheads formed, their mantle as Erskine's favorite sons was finally toppled, as the town found a new hero in local resident John Smeaton. Smeaton, an airport baggage handler, bellowed "fucking come on then" as he aimed a swift kick at the man (Kafeel Ahmed) who had just sent a jeep loaded with propane canisters crashing into the doors of the main terminal at Glasgow International Airport.

Greece

Full set here.

Codeine - Pickup Song (Glitterhouse)

While many New York bands entered the '90s at breakneck speed, there was an anomaly among them in Codeine. The slowcore scene was invented around this great lumbering beast, and listening to them now, it's still difficult to see who, if anyone, has surpassed them. Bands such as Idaho and Low are fine, but no one could make quiet music as loudly as Codeine. "Pickup Song" begins with some gently plucked guitar and the droney monotone of singer Stephen Immerwahr. Then it arrives. "It" is the woozy sweep of heavily tremeloed guitar that brusquely enters and exits the song throughout its tantalizingly short lifespan. Sounding like it was swiped straight from Kevin Shields' fingertips, and turned right up so it swamps the song whenever it enters the mix, you can almost picture the sheer delight on the faces of the band members when they suddenly had this glorious woosh of noise to add to their armory. But this is Codeine, a band for whom restraint is everything, and, as such, they probably just shrugged their shoulders and bottled up this wondrous new sound, only uncorking it with trademark discretion. In Gus Van Sant's 2002 feature Gerry, Casey Affleck and Matt Damon's characters head off into the desert, looking for an undefinable "thing" that the audience is never privy to. I like to imagine the great arc of guitar that pummels "Pickup Song" to its knees is such a "thing," and when Immerwahr dolefully murmers "Wish I'd never seen your face" he's directly addressing his own creation, starring into a creative graveyard as the realization dawns on him that these things only come along once or twice in anyone's lifetime.

Fisheye

Full set here.

Action Swingers - Fear of a Fucked Up Planet (Primo Scree)

Lead Action Swinger, the irrepressible Ned Hayden, pulled Julie Cafritz and Don Fleming into the band's ever-rotating line-up for this 1990 single. Ned's music is a pitiless concoction of grazed guitars and low production values. The none-more-punk sound of the Swingers is pockmarked by Ned's gruff vocals, which emerge from somewhere deep inside the musical mêlée, and are usually drawn from a base lyrical palette that simply revolves around the words "fuck" and "motherfucker." "Fear of a Fucked Up Planet" and its b-side, "Blowjob," are as good a way as any to witness Ned unleash his unrepentant fury, and the phrase "short, sharp, and to the point" could practically have been invented for the unrefined ear-grinding of the Action Swingers (full-length album Decimation Blvd. clocks in around the 21 minute mark). Of course, Ned's bullish reputation perfectly fits the music, but probably added to the fact that the tactless singer could never really keep a steady line-up of the band together. The Swingers' revolving door policy even saw J. Mascis and former Sonic Youth sticksman Bob Bert drop by to play on a few songs over the course of the band's chaotic lifespan. Ned's ire hasn't wilted though--at the present time he seems to spend most of his days hunting down and berating Matador boss Gerard Cosloy on various internet message boards.

STP - Smoke 'Em (Circuit Records)

In 1991, Hole's ferociously raw Pretty on the Inside was released, helping to kickstart Courtney Love's bizarre climb into the upper echelons of celebrity culture. Part of that rawness can be ascribed, at least in part, to the grunge-rock production dream team of Kim Gordon and Don Fleming. Fleming's time in Half Japanese was followed by the formation of several of his own bands, such as Shimmy Disc stalwarts B.A.L.L. and the powerpop-influenced combo Gumball, which in turn led to production duties for everyone from Teenage Fanclub to Alice Cooper. One year prior to Pretty on the Inside came this Gordon/Fleming produced single from New York City's STP. Guitarist Julie Cafritz put the all-girl line up of STP together shortly after the break up of Pussy Galore, released this magnificent statement of intent, then promptly disbanded the group. The reasons behind STP's split remain lost in the mists of time, but it's difficult to imagine where they could have gone after the down-at-heel scum rock of "Hey Bastard," which manages to condense the entire careers of (early) Hole and Babes in Toyland into a song that barely crawls over the one minute mark. Like Pussy Galore, there's no bass here, just three guttural guitars competing with rudimentary drums and the rasping vocals of singer (and former Dustdevil) Jacqui, who details the collapse of a relationship with begging pleas for her "bastard" boyfriend to "love me for what I am." Jacqui's forlorn appeal soon descends into hoarse and hopeless shrieks of "it's my nightmare!" as the song collapses in on itself. There are three other tracks included here, and a great back cover shot of the band by Michael Lavine, but "Hey Bastard" is all you need.

Mexico

Full set here.

Unsane - Concrete Bed (Glitterhouse)

In the early '90s, just before Manhattan's Lower East Side completely caved in to the baying crowds of post-college kids, who lined up to throw their trust funds straight into the sweaty palms of morally repugnant landlords, a few bands emitted one last glorious howl from the scene. The days of Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, DNA, and Mars were long over, Sonic Youth were sidling up to the majors, and Giuliani’s widespread clean up of the city was to begin in a few short years. The bands who were left, such as Cop Shoot Cop, the Action Swingers, STP, and Unsane, all made records that sounded like they were on the run from the gathering forces who were rapidly ushering them out of the neighborhood. “Concrete Bed,” Unsane’s 1990 single for German label Glitterhouse, perfectly embodies the fading scuzz of the Lower East Side. The de rigeur (for the time) buried vocals of the band's singer/guitarist Chris Spencer are barely decipherable (apart from the telling refrain: “it wasn’t always this way”), the late Charlie Ondras pounds away behind him, and the wonderfully muddy recording was cut on tape at Wharton Tiers’s legendary Fun City studio. The whole track sounds like it was written and recorded in about five minutes, and it probably was.